


The Gun He Carried

by PineappleHead (Rakizna)



Category: Psych (TV 2006)
Genre: Gen, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-07
Updated: 2020-04-07
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:40:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 13
Words: 10,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23527786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rakizna/pseuds/PineappleHead
Summary: On May 5, 2009, Carlton Lassiter held Shawn Spencer at gunpoint for four hours, twenty-six minutes, and thirty-eight seconds. He had five major reasons why. This is the story of what happened that day.
Kudos: 34
Collections: Pineapples With Personality





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This story was originally posted on Psychfic in 2014, making it one of my much earlier fics. I like to think that I've grown significantly as a writer since then, but regardless I'm very proud of this story and the hours of work & love that I put into it. It's not the happiest story, but I hope that it's one you enjoy. 
> 
> Thank you.

On May 5, 2009, Head Detective Carlton Lassiter held SBPD consultant Shawn Spencer at gunpoint for four hours, twenty-six minutes, and thirty-eight seconds in the living room of Lassiter's home in Santa Barbara, California. During the investigation of the events, it was undisclosed to the media how or why Spencer came to be in Lassiter's home that day. It was only after two weeks had passed that the police disclosed a report discussing what had occurred, but the report lacked many crucial details in an effort to protect the privacy of the parties involved. Now, five years and ten days later, the _Santa Barbara Street_ will be the first newspaper to reveal to the public the true and detailed story of what happened to Shawn Spencer and Carlton Lassiter in 2009. Using the testimonies of the remaining parties involved, the reports of officers who arrived on scene, and the diaries of current SBPD Head Detective Juliet O'Hara, the _Street_ reporters have pieced together the sequence of events.

**Sarah Ellen Mershon, Staff Writer**


	2. The Decision

Lassiter had been considering it for a while. It had been weighing on him for years. For so long that he couldn't remember a time when the notion of it wasn't there, hidden in the back of his mind, like that awful gaudy tie his mother had gotten him when he graduated the Academy that he tried to shove in the crevices of the closet but knew he couldn't throw away.

He'd considered it before, many times. Seriously considered it. When was he ever not serious? He'd thought about it. Planned it. Decided how he wanted to do it, and when, and what explanation he'd give. Wondered how his mother and his sister and his coworkers would react.

But he'd never done it. Never had the courage. Had always managed to convince himself that he was leaving something behind, something too important to lose, something he couldn't tear himself away from: Juliet O'Hara.

His partner. His beautiful, tough, intelligent partner, who had grown so much in the few years he'd known her. She would never forgive him, and he knew that.

So he held himself back. But there came a point where he couldn't hold it in any longer.

And when that point came, he put his plan into action.

On his off day, he sent Spencer a text message with his busted-up flip phone. It was short and simple. "My house. 2 o'clock. Be there." No explanations. He knew that Spencer wouldn't be able to resist, so that day he stayed indoors and waited.

Sure enough, Spencer was there. He came late, at 2:36 p.m. He was carrying two pineapple smoothies. He didn't even bother to knock. He just walked up to the door, shouted, "Lassie!" and walked right in.

"Spencer," Lassiter said. "Sit."  
"Sure," Spencer replied, flopping onto the couch. "Ow. Lassie, seriously, you've got to replace this couch. My butt is in agony right now. Can you hear it screaming?"  
Lassiter glowered and took a seat in the armchair across from him. "Spencer. Shut up."  
Spencer curled his lip into a puppy dog pout. "Lassie. Do you want a smoothie?" He placed one of the cups on the coffee table and slid it in Lassiter's direction. The plastic cup was clear and Lassiter could see the thick, citrus-yellow goop inside. The color was making him sick.  
"No, Spencer. I don't want your smoothie. I want you to shut up."  
"Suit yourself, Lassie," Spencer replied, and took a long slurp of his sick oozy drink. "So, what did you want to talk about?"

Lassiter held up his Glock 17 and aimed it square at Spencer's head.

Spencer's eyes popped open, wide as saucers, and at first he looked around, frantic, hoping that perhaps Lassiter was aiming at someone else, some perp that had snuck in and was standing behind him.

"There's no one here but us, Spencer," Lassiter said, his voice a low growl. "And if you want to live even a little while longer, you'll shut up and listen to everything I have to say. I want you to know exactly why you're here."


	3. Alone

When he was five, Carlton Lassiter's mother taught him how to be a gentleman.  
"You always hold a door open for a lady, Booker," she said during one of their lessons. "It doesn't matter if she's a student or a parent or a teacher or your little sister. Real men show women respect. You won't be like your father, Booker. You're going to be a real man. Women like real men."

Lassiter took that to heart. He was never a perfect person, and no matter how hard he tried, he never quite measured up to the standards his mother set for being a gentleman. But he always felt good knowing that, no matter what anyone else said, no matter what they said to him in school and college and the academy, he was a real man.

Until the day of his wedding.

He was late. He was so awfully, horribly late. Nothing had gone right that morning and the guilt and panic and shame was bubbling up inside him and threatening to overflow and he just had to get to Victoria and to that altar before he lost that chance forever.

He wanted it. That future, that glowing shining future, that love and that marriage and all those possibilities. He wanted it. He'd been young then. So full of hope. Never joy---after all, he was Carlton Lassiter. He'd never been joyous. But he did have hope, once.

His eyes were targeted on that altar, and when he opened the door, getting there was all he could think of. He didn't realize until his marriage was already over and he was laying alone in a cold bed one night that he'd neglected to hold open the door for his sister Lauren, a bridesmaid, who was rushing in behind him. It was the first time in his life that he'd forgotten.

Lassiter had never been particularly superstitious, but after that epiphany, he never could shake the idea that he was cursed, and that he'd cursed himself.

Nothing for him had worked out since then. Nothing regarding women, anyway. His wife? Left him. Lucinda? Transferred. Emilina? Never called him back. The Chief's sister? Didn't work out. Ursula? Definitely didn't work out. And the rest? None ever gave him a second glance. Except the prostitute he'd mistaken for one of O'Hara's friends. But she was a prostitute; she was paid to notice men. Not by him, of course. But finding out that such a charming woman was a lady of the night just added fuel to the notion that he was cursed. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, cursed, for the rest of his life.

Lassiter was cursed to be alone. No wife. No children. No family. Just another divorced cop.

Alone.

After he and Victoria first separated, he convinced himself that he had another chance. Another chance to break the curse. He was a gentleman, and a pristine one, and he had one person that he could always turn to who would always watch his back: his partner. Lucinda. And he treated her like she was made of gold, even before their relationship escalated from friendship to something more. He thought they would be together forever. He thought she'd never leave him. He thought he'd never lose her.

And then Spencer came. And then he told. And then Lassiter lost Lucinda.

And then there was Juliet O'Hara.

Juliet. He hadn't liked her at first, but she was his partner, and he'd do anything to protect her. It was obvious. Everyone knew that. He'd tried to tell her about the curse, that all romance was doomed, but she didn't listen, and then what had happened? She had tried to tell Spencer she loved him and he rejected her for a girl he knew back when.

Spencer had gone on his little date at the drive-in, happy and content, and he didn't see how crushed Juliet had been, because she'd put her heart on the line and had been burned. She'd come to him that night and she didn't say anything, but he knew what had gone wrong and he got her a coffee and took her home and offered to shoot Spencer.

She hadn't taken him up on it.

And that night, when he'd seen her heartbreak, he'd decided against this evil thing that he'd been planning to do---and at that point, he'd been seriously considering doing it sooner rather than later---because he was her partner, and if he did this, they would be separated. He couldn't do that to her. She needed him, and he needed her, and he would never do anything to hurt her. So he held off on it, because she was alone and he was alone.

And who better to keep the lonely company than someone who has always been alone? 


	4. Failure

Carlton Lassiter had never been able to admit failure. When he was fifteen, he brought home his first flunked English test. He didn't tell his mother. He'd burned the paper in the wood stove and told her that he'd gotten a C. She'd been disappointed, but not upset. A "C" grade meant "average," and average, though not great, was acceptable. Failure was not.

Ever since that first lie about failure, Lassiter had continued lying. To himself, to his family, to his colleagues. But mostly to himself. Lies were more acceptable than failure.

When his first Criminal Justice teacher told him he had no aptitude for police work, he didn't care. Or rather, he cared too much; he worked himself half to death to scrape by with an A in the class. He loved the feeling of beating the odds. He loved the feeling of putting in the effort and coming out on top, even when everyone warned him that he'd fail. He didn't like failing. He loved proving everyone wrong.

When he was 25, the instructor at the police academy told him to drop out, that he'd never be a cop, and that if he did, he'd never do anything more than direct traffic. Lassiter had been crushed.  
He'd worked harder, trained harder, practiced harder, and thought harder than anyone else there. He'd struggled for it. He memorized court cases and read every book on police work he could find. He lifted weights and ran at least five miles every day. He spent hours firing sidearms, aiming them, reloading them, taking them apart and memorizing the mechanisms and putting them back together. He deconstructed and reconstructed his favorite pistol so many times that he could do it blindfolded in under 30 seconds. He'd earned a badge. Why couldn't he get one?

A fortunate meeting with the Chief of Police at the time sparked a new determination to stick to his guns and stay on the force. The Chief did so much for him that he could never repay the debt, so in exchange, he worked harder than ever, and by the time he became Head Detective, he may not have been the most talented cop in Santa Barbara, but he was without a doubt the most hard-working.

They called him a robot, a machine, because the work was all-consuming and devoured him, along with any chance of a social life he had. They called him a freak, a weirdo, creepy, disturbing. But no one, not even his wife, not even his partner, understood why he had to work so much. They didn't and couldn't understand why work was so important to him, why he thought of it day and night, why he did almost nothing else. They assumed that it was a fault in his personality, that he was a defective human being.

The truth was that if he stopped working so hard, he would fail.

And failure was unacceptable.

He didn't understand how Spencer could work so little and still succeed. Well, not succeed, exactly; the man had lived a life of failure, and he was mediocre in every area but one. And that one area, that one thing that Spencer really and truly had a gift for, was not being psychic. Any idiot could see that. No, Spencer's true area of expertise was the one line of work that Lassiter cared about: police work.

Despite his mediocrity and foolishness and utter stupidity, Shawn Spencer was a good detective. And a good detective was the one thing Lassiter wanted to be. Spencer was a great cop without even thinking about it, and here Lassiter struggled for everything he had, lagging behind on every investigation, even though he put in at least three times the amount of work that Spencer did. Spencer even got a perfect score on the exam that Lassiter had studied for months to pass. And he did it at age fifteen, without even trying.

Every day, Lassiter went to work and saw Spencer dancing through---sometimes literally---and doing his job with no effort. Lassiter tried to blow him off with snide remarks about "real" cops and "real" detective work, but in his heart, Lassiter knew that Spencer was, always had been, and always would be twice the cop that Lassiter was.

Spencer was good, better than any detective on the force. No matter how high Lassiter rose through the ranks, he would always be a failure compared to the SBPD's psychic consultant.

Failure was unacceptable. 


	5. Fear

When Lassiter was ten, his father lost his job. He came home one day, covered in dirt and sweat and reeking of hard liquor. He griped about the loss over the dinner table.

"It's those machines," he'd said. "They're taking over everything. No one cares about people anymore. It's all about efficiency these days. If you can't keep up with the machines, they throw you out, plain and simple, and there ain't nothing going to stop them. They throw you out and replace you. They replace you with something that ain't even human! We're all just numbers to them, numbers on a sheet of paper. They think they can take my job. Well, they can keep their blood money. I'm done. I quit!"

Lassiter's father had walked out the door then, saying he was making a run to the store.

Lassiter never saw him again.

But the words stayed behind.

Lassiter feared being replaced more than anything else after that.

He wondered if his father had found a new family to replace his inefficient old one that he had been with when he lost his job. A new wife to come home to. A new young son to play cops and robbers with. If he had been a better son, would his father have stayed?

When Lassiter's mother began dropping him off at Old Sonora, he was able to forget that he'd been replaced. He could pretend that he was a real cowboy sheriff like Hank, and that his name was Binky Mendel and not Carlton Lassiter, and that Hank was his father and that he'd never have to worry about being forgotten ever again. But no matter how much he loved Hank and no matter how safe he felt at Old Sonora, he was never quite able to tell Hank that he wanted Hank as his father, because then he would be replacing his real father, and deep inside he missed his father and wanted him back.

When Karen Vick had replaced his old mentor as police chief, he liked her from the start. She had a hand that could be both gentle and heavy, and she wasn't afraid to assert her will over her subordinates while still giving them the flexibility they needed. Karen represented balance, and he respected that. He knew that she would do justice to the office.

Yet he could never accept her.

She had replaced the man who had been perhaps not a father figure to him, but something very close, and for that, he couldn't bring himself to forgive her. He'd never liked change, and when that change was so close to his closet-guarded heart, that was it. There was no chance.

He played it off as that he simply wanted her job, but that wasn't true, and he knew it. Even if he did want to be police chief, he could never forgive himself for replacing the woman who had replaced his mentor. Sometimes he wondered how anyone could ever live in a world where everyone tore each other apart for a role that they'd stolen from someone else. Everybody replaced everybody. No one was safe, and no one was stable. No one could be trusted.

When Victoria left him, he feared for the longest time that she'd replace him with a new husband. He thought about it every night until he finally gave up on her after that last Tuesday they met.  
He knew then that she would replace him, it was inevitable, and that if he had any sense at all, he would replace her, too, and move on with his life.

But he also knew that he would never move on. Despite all that big talk about tomorrow, he could never replace her. He could never even think of replacing her.

Chief Vick replaced his old mentor. Juliet replaced his old partner. Lassiter replaced the old head detective.

How long would it be before Spencer replaced him? 


	6. Love

Carlton Lassiter had never been good at showing affection. At least, not the way most people saw it.

In Lassiter's eyes, affection was respect. Showing someone respect was the highest honor he could give, and the highest honor he could earn. He complied with the expectations of his superiors and expected his subordinates to obey his orders. He performed with the highest level of efficiency and skill possible and expected his coworkers to show the same competency. So goes the chain of command, and Lassiter followed the chain rigidly, because the chain of command means respect. You show respect for your higher officers, and the lower officers show respect for you, and a leader who is respected by all is a man worthy of esteem. This esteem was what Lassiter viewed as "affection."

Lassiter did not show affection to many people.

Especially not to Spencer, who never met his standards and never, ever, ever, ever followed the chain of command.

But despite this lack of "affection," Lassiter did, in fact, love people.

When he was sixteen, Lassiter tried to start a club at school. He knew that there were people out there just like him, people who liked talking about William Quantrill and Ulysses S. Grant and President Reagan and the NRA. He knew that if he could find them, he could make friends, and so he started the Anti-Glee Club.

Only one person joined, a D-student with a mullet and a penchant for asking Lassiter for money. Sometimes, when Stumpy came in, Lassiter could have sworn he smelled tobacco on the kid's breath. But Lassiter let him stay in the club. He told Stumpy that he'd earned a high honor, and Stumpy would salute and laugh. The truth was that Lassiter wished he could have had anybody else in the school as his friend, but nobody else would be there, and people is always better than no people.

In college, he'd joined the Criminal Justice Club. It made sense that he'd find friends there, among his peers. After all, weren't they like-minded individuals? But they were just as merciless as their younger counterparts. At twenty and a half years old, Lassiter spent six hours baking a massive tray of chocolate chip cookies for a fundraiser. The professor, a soft-spoken man who bore a strong resemblance to Groucho Marx, told him that his cookies were better by far than the "snot that the rest of the kids cooked up." But Lassiter's cookies were never included in the bake sale. Apart from the dozen or so that Professor Groucho took home, Lassiter took the entire tray home untouched. Every time he approached one of his classmates on campus, they turned and walked away.

Just when it seemed like Lassiter would never fit in, he'd gotten a job in the police force, one of Santa Barbara's finest. Finally, he was where he belonged!

But nothing happened.

He finally had respect. A little, anyway. From rookies and subordinates like McNab and his brilliant beautiful partner Juliet. Maybe a little from the Chief. And with that, maybe he could overlook all the snide comments about how uptight he was or those stupid names like "Detective Dipstick."

But acceptance?

He ate alone. Sure, he chose to get his own food when everyone else ordered takeout, but a healthy fear of assassination by poisoning didn't mean that he was snubbing anyone. Dobson was a vegetarian and got broccoli when everyone else ordered orange chicken, but nobody gave him any flak about being different. But Lassiter wasn't Dobson and Lassiter was paranoid, they said, and he was too strict and too rigid and he was obsessive and he was violent.

Lassiter couldn't help being morbid. It was the way he was. And he couldn't help being strict and focused because that was how he was taught and that was how he learned. Strict and focused was a good thing. Wasn't it?

Just like in the reenactments. Everyone had to charge together, or the battlefield would be in shambles and the audience wouldn't make any sense of the troop movements, would be unable to understand the great historical drama of Union and Confederate. Right?

Well, apparently his fellow reenactors had different ideas.

All through his life, everyone he'd tried to impress had rebuffed him or scorned him or made fun of him. Or worse, they ignored him completely, looked right through him, like he didn't exist.

That was the look most people gave him as he went through life. Until he flashed that gold badge, nobody cared who he was or whether he lived or whether he died. But that gold badge meant that he'd sworn to protect them and defend them and shield them from the evils that plagued the Earth.

It meant nothing.

He never received affection. He never received respect.

Love?

Unreciprocated.

Unrequited.

All love must end in despair.

...Or death. 


	7. Ambition

  
When he was five, Lassiter wanted to be a hero like the ones he colored in the coloring books his aunt gave him for Christmas. He also wanted to be a soldier, like his great-great-great grandfather Muscum T. Lassiter, and stop evil raiders. He wanted to be a car parts maker like his father and he wanted to be a famous guitar player like the uncle that his mother always called "good-for-nothing." But most of all, he wanted to be the line leader in his kindergarten class. Being the line leader meant getting to the water fountain first and it meant that you were important without having to watch the other kids like the bathroom monitors did. Lassiter didn't really like any of the other kids, but he wanted them to look up to him the way he looked up to the fifth graders who played kickball at recess and knew words that he couldn't read.

His teacher didn't assign him to be line leader. She made him the pencil sharpener instead. But Lassiter didn't mind. He thought that if he did really good at sharpening pencils, maybe she'd change her mind because he was such a hard worker.

She didn't.

But Lassiter never worried about losing opportunities like that. Not at that age.

No, it wasn't until high school that the drive to be better took him over.

When he was fourteen, he decided to run for class president. He made posters with Magic Markers and photos he took and developed himself, using supplies he borrowed from a classmate whose cat he'd saved from being hit by a car. He taped them up all over the school and put handmade flyers on each bulletin board, even the ones in the teachers' lounge, just in case they had some sway over their students' votes. He didn't win, but the rush of competition and the thrill of feeling so close to victory spurred him on to bigger and better things.

He blocked out the knowledge that he'd only gotten sixteen votes out of a class of four hundred.

His next competitive rush of adrenaline came the year after that, when he'd applied to be a student ambassador. It was a highly selective program and only ten students from the entire school would be chosen. Lassiter wasn't admitted into the ranks of that particular elite bunch---something about a lack of people skills and an intimidating demeanor---but the idea that he came close fueled him even more, made him hungrier for the next opportunity, the next contest, and the next chance to rise up in the world.

Every time the chance to go up in rank came along, Lassiter pounced on it and pursued it like a vicious animal stalking its next meal. Nine times out of ten, he'd be turned away with a passive-aggressive phrase like, "Try being less forceful and more open to others' ideas," or "You just weren't what we were looking for," or "Quite frankly, we found you disturbing," but every so often, something would actually work out in his favor.

Balancing that need to claw his way to promotion and that instinctual, raw terror and shame of failure was a perilous activity.

His first real failure---the first failure that he couldn't brush off as not being what they were looking for or attribute to being unpopular---came when he was a rookie cop. It was his first official day with the Santa Barbara Police Department. His mustache was waxed, his badge was shined, and his blue uniform was immaculate. He was proud and thrilled and almost dazed because he couldn't believe that after so many years of grueling, heart-pounding, back-breaking work, he was actually there, in that moment, a real honest-to-God police officer, just like those cartoonish little pictures he'd colored way back when.

He was standing beside the receptionist's desk, trying to absorb every facet of the world around him, trying to process the rush of it all that was flooding his senses, when the Head Detective walked past, suspect in tow. Lassiter's eyes went big as silver dollars when Detective Spencer walked by. He was the embodiment of all the beauty Lassiter saw in the police force: fighting crime, bringing new life to the city, helping people one case at a time, taking down some of the worst scum in the nation. Lassiter couldn't wait to earn a gold badge of his own.

"Someday," he thought to himself, "that's what I'm going to be."

"Hey, Beanpole," the detective said, shattering Lassiter's moment of reflection and causing his heart to run laps. "Book him!"  
"Sir?" Lassiter stammered, reaching for his handcuffs.  
"Never mind," the detective said, jerking the suspect around and shoving him to the back. "I'll do it myself."

Lassiter stood there, cuffs in hand, heart broken into tiny minuscule pieces, cursing at himself for an opportunity wasted.

The Head Detective had called upon him, and he hadn't answered.

It would never happen again.

Years later, Lassiter had reached his dream of being Head Detective, and now he had a higher goal in mind.

To be the Police Chief meant that one had become the ultimate crime-fighting machine. To be Police Chief meant that one had too much talent to be contained to one person or one unit. To be Police Chief meant that one had the skill and know-how necessary to coordinate an entire precinct of cops. A Police Chief had power, dignity, respect, and responsibility. The Police Chief had the safety and future of the city in his hands.

Or her hands, as Karen not-so-gently reminded him.

Sometimes, after solving a case that had thrown him for a loop for days, he thought that maybe his dream would come true after all, that maybe he did have a real possibility. That maybe he wasn't the Beanpole anymore, and that he could have the glorious responsibility of protecting thousands of people, the entire city. That maybe, just once, he could reach the top and reap the fruits of his work.

But sometimes, after Spencer the Younger had wrapped up yet another successful case that Lassiter had dismissed long ago as being solved or cold, he knew that he never would. Spencer's skills weren't just an embarrassment; they were an obstacle. As long as Shawn Spencer solved crimes, Lassiter was not the best crime-solving machine in Santa Barbara. As long as he needed Shawn Spencer's help, he would never be fit for defending the entire city. A leader's task is a lonely one, and a leader must be infallible.

Lassiter may have been lonely, but never was he infallible.

He wanted it. The hunger for promotion burned within him. He was no longer satisfied with being a coloring-book hero. He wanted more from his life, he wanted to make a difference, and he wanted to prove that he was worth something. He wanted to be worth respecting, worth knowing...and worth loving. 


	8. The Breaking Point

  
Lassiter had considered it before, had contemplated it and planned it, but he knew he could never actually go through with it.

Not until the day he and Spencer had a brawl in the interrogation room.

That day was, or would have been, his anniversary with Victoria had she stayed. To add insult to injury, it was a Tuesday. Not the 17th, thank heaven above, but ever since that train wreck of a day when he'd given in and signed those divorce papers, he'd harbored a not-so-secret loathing of Tuesdays.

O'Hara had just left to escort their latest suspect back to the holding cell, and Spencer was trying to convince him that once again, he had the wrong guy.

"Look, Spencer, I don't care what kind of vibes or visions you have. This time, I know that I am right! You. Are. Wrong!"  
"No, I'm not, Lassie!" Spencer retorted. "Why can't you admit that this makes no sense? If that guy murdered his wife as a crime of passion like you say he did, then why wouldn't he use something he had at hand? Why hire someone else to kill her? Why not do it himself? Why not do it in the heat of that moment? Why wait?"  
"You heard the man. He admitted that he wanted her dead, and he admitted that he'd been having violent thoughts!"  
"But he didn't kill her, Lassie! His alibi is solid!"  
"And how do you know that, Spencer? Because you obtained evidence illegally and now you're going to guide me to it? Well, this time, it's not going to work!"  
Spencer's face darkened, and for a moment, Lassiter felt the flush of victory. "What's wrong, Spencer?" Lassiter continued. "Struck a nerve? Did I finally hit on the truth? Did I finally convince you that I'm not the fool you think I am? I see right through you, Spencer."  
"You might see right through me, Lassie," Spencer said. "But I'm twice the detective you are, and you know it."

Lassiter couldn't keep it in any longer. Before he knew what he was doing, his fist had connected with Spencer's lower jaw, smack into the right side of the younger man's face. He heard a horrible crunch, and Spencer tumbled to the ground, head missing the corner of the table by a mere inch.

Lassiter's stomach turned in horror. What had he done? What if he'd broken the psychic's jaw? Or worse, what if Spencer had hit his head too hard on the concrete floor?

But there was no blood, and soon Shawn got to his feet, staggering backwards a few steps. The man's face was red, and he rubbed it, grimacing, but he seemed to have no serious injury. Lassiter was relieved, because he knew that if he'd hurt Spencer, there would have been consequences, probably legal ones, but also from Juliet, and his partner---and best friend, he admitted to himself---meant more to him than anything else.

Spencer left the room then, intercepting the beautiful Juliet before she could rejoin Lassiter. Taking her away to play with her, to use her feelings to manipulate her into believing him. Leaving Lassiter utterly alone.

That moment, when he watched her walk away with his worst and fiercest rival, with Spencer's arm around her waist like the psychic owned her, was the moment he realized that he wasn't kidding himself about being alone. He wasn't alone in the room, or in the station, or at home, or even in the city, but he was alone in life. Water, water, everywhere, but not a drop to drink. Every day, he found himself surrounded by people he'd lost, people he'd loved, people he'd protected, people he'd worked with, and people he'd cared for, but none of them would ever be there in return.

"I am alone," he thought, and suddenly it became much easier to make the decision to carry out that one notion that had plagued him for so long.

He was going to do it.

Forget ambition. His dreams meant nothing anyway. Forget his family, what little of it he had left. They'd move on anyway. Forget Juliet. She had Spencer now, and she was a good cop now, and she'd never need him again anyway.

He had nothing to lose anymore.

He would do it.

He felt like he was moving in a dream, as he put the whole thing together. The entire process was just too easy. He'd mulled it over so many times that he made all the preparations on autopilot, and the only reason it took him as long as it did to prepare (two weeks and one day) was that he wanted to have time to back out if he changed his mind.

He didn't, and part of him was grateful for that. Soon the nightmare would be over. Soon he would find the peace that had eluded him. He thought about what it would be like to carry out the plan, and the feeling of serenity that washed over him comforted him. Soon. So soon.

Six days into his preparation period, he experienced a brief moment of fear. He found himself looking over his shoulder, scrutinizing people's faces as they walked by, paying extra close attention to Juliet's body language. Intense bouts of anxiety tore through him every so often over the next week, torturous moments when he knew for certain that every single person who looked at him could sense what he was planning, that somehow they knew what was happening in his mind.

None of them ever stopped him.

Lovely Juliet, with her kind smile and fast draw, drew Lassiter's special attention, and he watched her more than anyone else during those last few days. Surely if anyone knew, she'd know. She who knew him better than anyone else on the planet, she would know what he was planning if it was at all possible for someone to figure out his thoughts.

She never stopped him, and never even mentioned it, and he knew that two things were possible. Either he had hidden it well enough that no one would ever suspect, or she did know and didn't care to stop him.

For a few days, he struggled with the possibilities, wondering which was true and which was untrue, until finally he realized that neither possibility mattered.

No one stopped him, and he was going to do it, whether anyone anticipated it or not. 


	9. The Struggle

  
"Lassie," Shawn said. "Lassie, please. Please, just put the gun down."

Spencer's voice was low and he was begging, no, pleading, for release, but Lassiter wasn't going to let him go that easily.

"Did you not listen to a word I said, Spencer?"  
"Lassie, I've been listening to you. I've been listening to you this whole time, and I know you know that every single word is burned into my memory and I will never forget it. But please, Lassie, don't let it end this way. Just take a minute. Take just one minute to think about what you're doing."  
Lassiter laughed, the cold dry laugh of the soon-to-be death row inmate. "I told you already, Spencer. I've been thinking. It feels like I've been thinking about it my whole life. There's nothing to stop me, Spencer, from ending it all right now!" He jammed the muzzle of the gun against Shawn's left temple, watching the barely-visible blood vessels pulsating beneath the skin as Shawn's heart rate increased.  
"Lassie. I know you don't want to do this."  
"But I do, Spencer. Oh, but I do." Lassiter sat back down in his chair, never taking his aim off Shawn's head.  
"Listen. There are other ways out. There are other ways to resolve your problems, Lassie, please!"

"No, there aren't!" Lassiter shouted. "Don't you think I've tried, Spencer? Don't you think that I have done everything that's possible to fix everything? Can't you see how much I have--- How hard I've been working, and I--- I just never get anywhere, Spencer! My life is a circle and I keep going around and around the track like I'm trapped in orbit and I'll never be able to break free! No matter what I do, Spencer, nothing changes."  
Lassiter's voice grew quiet then, and all the anger left him, and his shoulders sagged like they had been wearing a great weight, and Shawn could see every line on Lassiter's face. Shawn thought that if he looked hard enough, he'd be able to see every crevice of each and every one of Lassiter's bones.  
"That's why I have to do this, Spencer. I'm sorry I have to do this to you. Believe me, I am. I know the consequences of my actions. I've considered it a thousand times, a thousand different ways. This will be the most painless for both of us, I assure you. This is the only way to change it. If I don't do this, nothing will ever change for me."  
"Lassie, this isn't the kind of change you want," Shawn said. "I know you're feeling desperate, and I know you think you're out of options, but trust me, violence is not the answer!"  
"I do trust you, Spencer. You astound me. You're the best cop I know, and you know what? I hate you for it. And that's why I wanted you here. This is the end, Spencer." There came that awful, dry, crackling laugh again.  
"Lassie. Lassie, this can't be the end. Don't let it end this way! This is only the end because you're making it this way! I can help you, Lassie!"

"Help me?" Lassiter frowned. "How? By prancing around the office with pineapple smoothies and ridiculous claims of visions? By super-gluing my stapler to my desk and my chair to the floor? By putting salt in my coffee and ruining my reputation at every chance you get? No, Spencer! You won't help me! You've made that quite clear!"  
"Lassie." The lump in Shawn's throat threatened to choke him. "Lassie, I know I'm not a good friend. I know I'm not a good person, but Lassie, I can get you out of this!"  
Lassiter looked at the floor, tracing the navy blue squiggles on the white rug beneath his coffee table. How come he'd never noticed them before? "You're right, Spencer."  
"I know I am, Lassie," Shawn said, feeling a little butterfly of hope rising inside him.  
"You're not a good person. But you're a better person than me." Lassiter's head, and his gun, came back up to stare at Shawn's head, and that little butterfly sank back down into obscurity.

"Lassie. You said you wanted your life to change. Well, it can! Maybe you just need to take a minute to breathe. Okay? Picture yourself on a vacation. Your first vacation in---ever. And maybe while you're there, you find a brand new girlfriend. That doesn't sound so bad, right?" Shawn said.  
"No," Lassiter admitted. "Except that it's fantasy."  
"It's not so hard to make fantasy into reality. Gus and I do it every day! You can, too. We'll help you. You deserve to rest, Lassie."  
"A rest," Lassiter murmured. "Yes. That's exactly what I need."  
Shawn smiled. "Yes, Lassie. That--that is it. You need a rest. So just rest. No pressure, no responsibilities, no worries. Just you and the open road. And maybe a beach. And a Coca-Cola. Ooh, and maybe a 3 Musketeers bar!"  
"Thank you, Spencer," Lassiter said, feeling a few pounds of his staggering burden fall from his shoulders. "That's the best advice I've ever gotten. Now I am thoroughly convinced. I need to rest." He flicked the safety off, aim never wavering as he made the tiny motion. "And I am going to get the rest that I need."

Shawn's eyes went wide. "What about Jules? She'll blame herself for eternity. You know that!"  
Shawn could feel the surging amounts of blood his heart was pumping through his body as his blood pressure spiked.  
"You're right," Lassiter said. "I do know that. I know how she'll feel and it's tearing me apart to think that, but you know what? O'Hara--O'Hara is strong. She's a strong woman and a good cop. She'll forgive herself. I won't."  
"Lassie." Shawn wanted to shake the man sitting across from him, to shake the brittle man who had so clearly been driven to the brink of desperation, and wanted to pull him back to the safety of the police station, but knew better than to make any sudden moves. "Lassie, please. I am begging you, Lassie. Do not do this. Do not do this to me, and do not do this to yourself, and most of all, do not do this to Jules. Please, Lassie, please."

Both men were shocked to realize that tears were streaming down Shawn's red, flushed cheeks.

For a moment, for a long moment, Lassiter really considered not doing it.

"I'm sorry, Spencer," Lassiter said after a pause that was so long that Shawn thought that maybe he had some hope after all. "But I have to do this."

Shawn screamed louder than he believed possible when the gunshot rang out and the fatal bullet struck its target. 


	10. The End

  
"Lassie!" Shawn screamed. "Lassie, no!" He watched, paralyzed with horror as Lassiter's body rolled out of his chair and onto the floor, staining the white rug red with the thick ooze that was pouring out of the detective's shattered skull. Soon, the ooze was gushing into the creases of Shawn's hands as he lunged to put pressure on the wound.

But the bleeding didn't stop.

With one hand, Shawn pressed down on the hole in the right side of Lassiter's head while he dialed 911 with the other. He put the phone on speaker as soon as the operator picked up and set the blood-smeared phone on the floor, freeing up his hand to apply pressure again. "Lassie, please, hold on," Shawn shouted as the operator informed him, in a calm, eerily mechanical voice that help was on the way.

Blood. There was too much blood. The sight of it sickened him, and for once, Shawn understood the horrible agony Gus endured when coming face-to-ooze with the blood splatters at a crime scene.

"Lassie, come on, man, please don't die!"

After two minutes, Shawn felt brave enough to move his right hand from Lassiter's skull to his neck to feel the carotid artery. Lassiter still had a pulse. The right hand jerked back to the skull, unsteady and shaky. Shawn leaned his head a fraction closer to Lassiter's face to listen, and through the dying man's parted lips his breath came in ragged gasps.

"You're still alive, Lassie. I know you can make it. It's been three minutes. The operator says they're on their way. She said the ambulance would be here in five. Two more minutes, Lassie, just hold on!"

A flashback rippled through Shawn's panicked, distorted mind: the wavy memory of being tied up in a garage, with a shammy duct-taped to his shoulder and being flooded with jagged spikes of the most horrible pain he'd ever experienced, more pain than he could ever have imagined.  
He imagined the pain tearing into the white hard bone of Lassiter's skull, the same bone that he could feel pressing into the edges of his hands. He pictured the bullet lodging inside Lassiter's soft pinkish-gray brain, maybe cutting a hole through the thick pasty white matter.

"This is my fault. This is all my fault. I'm sorry, Lassie, please hang on. Hang on for Jules. Hang on for your sister. Hang on for everyone who's counting on you. Please, Lassie!"

He could hear the sirens edging closer, but they weren't coming fast enough.

"Lassie's going to die," he thought. "This is it. This is the end. It's over."

The paramedics came through the door.

"It's over."

They moved Shawn's hands away and replaced them with their latex-gloved own. They slipped an oxygen mask over Lassie's face and strapped him to a yellow stretcher.

"Yellow? Why yellow? He hates yellow. It's a happy color, for Pete's sake. It looks like pineapples. He hates pineapples and he's never happy."

"Would you like to ride in the ambulance with him?"

"It's over."

"Shawn, what happened?"

"Juliet, is that you?"

"Oh, no, Carlton!"

"Sir, I need to ask you some questions."

"He shot himself. In the head. He ate his gun. Why do they say that, Officer? I mean, Lassie loved his guns too much to eat them. Did you know him?"

"No, sir. Where is the gun?"

"It's on his rug, with the ooze. Hey, Gus? I'm gonna be sick."

"Shawn, I'm so sorry for your loss."

"Hey, Mom. Thanks for the phone call. It's over."

"Shawn, are you all right?"

"Yeah, Dad. I'm fine. It's over."

"Shawn?"

"Where am I?"

"Shawn?"

"Gus?"

"You're at my place. You went into shock. You stayed here last night. Don't you remember?"

"No. Is Lassie okay?"

"Shawn..."

"Gus. It's over. It's over, isn't it?"

"No, Shawn. It isn't."

Shawn poured a hot cappuccino and six churros down his throat, ravenous. He remembered nothing from the day before except Lassie and the fatal gunshot and the long, tortured suicide note. The note he carried inside him, the note whose words burned his insides and filled the gaping holes with the most monumental guilt he'd ever known, as if that note was trying to turn him into a living memorial to Carlton Lassiter.

Maybe that was the plan.


	11. The Loss

  
Gus, who'd left Shawn alone in his kitchen for a couple hours, returned at 9:37 am, figuring that his best friend had had enough alone time. He carried a pineapple smoothie and offered it to Shawn, but Shawn ran to the bathroom and threw up as soon as he saw it.

What had happened to the smoothies he'd taken to Lassiter's house? Shawn couldn't remember. Had he finished his? What did he do with the cup? Was it lying on the floor, empty, with the clear plastic cracked? Was Lassiter's still untouched on the coffee table?

At 10:26 am, he strapped himself into the passenger seat of the Blueberry and stared at the window as Gus drove to the hospital. It wasn't raining. Why wasn't it raining? When someone gets hurt or killed or depressed in the movies, it always rains. Why wasn't it raining for Lassie?

They arrived at the hospital at 10:47 am and went straight up to Lassiter's room on the seventh floor. Juliet was already there, along with Lassie's mother, his sister Lauren, and Buzz McNab. Shawn stared at the frail, thin frame stretched across the bed. It was so pale and so bony, and it was completely limp. "That's not Lassie," Shawn thought, allowing himself the tiny secret hope that maybe there had been a mistake even as he knew there wasn't. Lassiter was lanky, but the man on that bed was thin. Lassiter was salt-and-pepper, but this man was gray. Lassiter was alive, but this man was a living skeleton. "What have we done, Lassie?" Shawn thought.

He heard a sobbing noise from the left side of the bed. At first he thought it was Jules, but her tears were a silent stream rolling down her cheeks. No crying came from McNab; just silent sadness. Lauren made no noise as she sat beside her brother's bed, holding his hand and staring at his motionless face, her eyes hollow with shock and tinted by dark circles beneath them.

That left Lassiter's mother. She was the noisy crier. She wept with a handkerchief to her face as her lover---what was the name? Althea?---gently patted her shoulder. That struck Shawn as funny. From what he'd gathered about Lassie's mother, she wasn't the weeping type.

"We shouldn't be here," Shawn said at last.

For a long time, there was no response.

Then a voice said, "Booker wouldn't have wanted us here."  
"I'm sure he'd want us to be here, Mom," Lauren replied. "I hate to think of him being alone."  
"He'd want to be alone," Lassiter's mother insisted. "He'd want to die with dignity."  
"He might recover."  
Lassiter's mother scoffed. "You're crazy if you think that. No, Carlton was trying to kill himself, and he's going to die. He may have botched it up, but he won't make it in the end. You'll see." She stood up. "He'd want to die alone and with some dignity, and that's what I'm going to make sure he gets." She walked out of the room then, leaving Althea to gather their purses and catch up. By the time she left the room, her eyes were red and swollen, but her tears had all dried.  
"She says things," Lauren whispered. "Terrible things."  
"She's probably just in shock," Buzz said. "And sad."  
"No," Lauren said, her voice cracking. "She means it."

Juliet heaved a long sigh, and after that, there were three and a half minutes of almost total silence. The only sounds came from the beeping of the heart monitor, the voices of nurses passing in the hall, and the sounds of ragged breathing.

Finally, Juliet said, "Listen. There's something you need to know."  
"What is it?" Lauren asked.  
"Your--your mom got here first. She and I got here close to the same time this morning. It was--it was really early. And the doctor came to us and--well, he had her listed as his next of kin. I guess because after the divorce..." Juliet trailed off and took a deep breath before continuing. "What I'm trying to say is that the doctor told us that Carlton is brain-dead. And your mom told them--she told them to let him go."

Every set of eyes in the room stared at her, with the exception of Lassiter's. His face was still motionless, his eyes still sunken and closed. Shawn wondered if, under his lids, Lassiter's eyes were tracking them, sensing somehow that he was being spoken of. But that was impossible, because Lassie was brain-dead.

"He can't be," Lauren said, and the shock gave way to trauma and the trauma turned to grief and her eyes started overflowing. "I can't lose him like this."  
"I know it's hard. It's hard on all of us," Jules said, and Shawn admired her restraint. He knew her well enough to know when the cracks began to show up in all the defenses she put up inside, and he knew her well enough to know when compassion got a hold of her, and he knew her well enough to know when she was nothing else but sad. He wanted to put his arms around her and comfort her so that she could be strong and comfort Lassiter's sister, but somehow he couldn't move. He could only stare at those. Sunken. Eyes.

It was wrong, all of it was wrong, they shouldn't be there, and Lassie shouldn't be there, this should never have happened, why did it happen, why didn't he stop it?

The note.

The note.

Lassie had always been alone. He needed to be with people now.  
Lassie had always felt like a failure. He needed to have his successful family and partner now.  
Lassie had always been afraid. He needed someone to be fearless for him now.  
Lassie had always felt unloved. He needed those who loved him now.  
Lassie had always been trying to be the best. He needed the people who saw the best in him right now.

The motion of drawing his hand to his head may have been something Shawn developed for his role as a fake psychic, but the gasp that pushed out of his lungs right then was nothing he could have faked. He knew what the note meant.  
"I'm sensing something," he said.

"What is it?" Lauren asked.

"I'm sensing that your mom is wrong. Lassie doesn't want to be alone. He never wanted to be alone. He loves you all very much, and the only reason he ever cared about dignity was so that he could make you proud. He was afraid of failing and letting you down, and he always wanted to be the best at everything to prove to you that--that he was worthy of having you in his life. He needs you here, Lauren. And Jules. And even you, McNab. Lassie... Lassie was lonely. But he doesn't have to be anymore."

"Okay," Lauren said, squeezing her brother's hand as she cried. "Okay. I'll stay. I just can't believe it's ending like this."

"That was beautiful, Shawn," said Juliet. Even though her voice was calm, she wiped her tears away with the back of her hand when she thought no one else was looking.

Shawn said, "Thank you. But you shouldn't be saying that to me. Say it to Lassie. He left quite the suicide note."


	12. Recovery

  
Shawn noticed that nobody cried at Lassiter's funeral. Everyone just stood around, staring at the coffin, listening half-heartedly to the kind words spoken by Father Westley. The truth was that, even though they all respected Lassiter, there was nothing much to say. For the ones who had known him well, like Lauren and Juliet, the tears were all gone, all used up and dried and brushed away. And for the rest of them, well, they didn't know Lassiter at all. Not really. He showed up and did his job and went home and that was it. Nothing more, nothing less. He did what was expected of him. That was all he ever did. And therefore, it was logical that there were no tears at his funeral, no heart-wrenching, nerve-wracking sobs of anguish or cries of sorrow and despair. No tears for Lassiter's funeral.

But there were no cheers for Juliet's promotion, either.

It made sense that she would be head detective. She'd been his partner, had been trained by him personally. She was the best detective on the force and everyone knew it. She deserved the job, she'd been groomed to lead. But there was a shadow over it, and everyone could tell. She took no joy in the job, and the job changed her.  
She never barked orders like Lassiter had. She spoke, and she was obeyed. She acted, and she was followed. She solved cases like wildfire, like a cleansing purge to wipe away the stain of death that had been smeared across Santa Barbara. Yet no matter how many cases she solved, she still felt empty, as though all her victories were hollow. Shawn could tell in the way her eyes looked as she gave press releases in a monotone voice and the way her wardrobe slowly cast aside every color that wasn't black, white, or gray. Shawn could tell in the way she spoke to him less and less and never said a word about her job unless she was actually on duty.

Shawn was different, too. He knew he was, but he couldn't stop it. Couldn't change it. He couldn't breathe sometimes when Juliet was around. She blamed him. He was certain of it. They all did. Juliet, the Chief, Buzz, Lauren, the other cops, they all blamed him. He should've been smarter. He should've seen it, should've seen the signs. He should've called. He should've been faster and stopped it. He should've said the right things, or better yet, he should've never let Lassiter go that far. He should've stopped the stupid pranks and stopped doing everything to push the man to the brink. Shawn had wanted to see how far he could go, how much he could get away with, how many pranks he could pull.

And now he knew.

Everyone knew.

Everyone knew what he had done. But they hadn't heard the note.

He'd tried to tell Juliet, to let her hear everything, the full, complete version of Lassiter's final message and not just the condensed version from the day of his death at the hospital. But she didn't want to hear it. She'd walked away or started to cry or found an excuse or flat out told him not to tell her.

He wanted to tell Gus or his dad, but they didn't know Lassiter, not really. They hadn't spent that much time with him. Shawn hadn't either, to be honest, which only made Shawn wonder more why Lassiter chose him. He knew that Lassiter's choice would be the one mystery he would never solve.

He thought about telling Lassiter's family, but Lassiter's mother wouldn't understand and Lauren would just get upset. He tried telling Buzz, but Buzz just got confused.

The burden was aching inside him and he couldn't carry it anymore. He couldn't live with himself and he couldn't live with Juliet, the woman he loved who was slowly turning gray.

Eventually, he found himself in the only place he could go. He stared down at Lassiter's shiny black tombstone and put a pebble on the top.

"Hey, Lassie," he said. "I just wanted to let you know that you ruined all our lives, you selfish--- No, I can't call you that. It's rude to speak ill of the dead. But it's the truth. I get it, that you were hurting. But it's just not fair!" He held up the small black duffel bag in his hand. "Do you know what this is? This is my suitcase, Lassie. This is my bag, and it's packed, and do you know why? It's because of you. Because you did this! This is your fault! Juliet is turning into someone that I don't even know anymore. She had so much life in her, and now she's just this mechanical toy that winds itself up and does your job and lies in my bed at night without thinking or feeling anything! She doesn't talk to me anymore! She doesn't love me anymore! You broke her, just like I told you that you would! And nobody understands how bad it hurts to be the last one to see you without your head blown open! I can't talk to Gus or my dad or anyone because you did this to me! You destroyed everything! And for what? I hope you're not hurting anymore, because we sure are!"

Throat aching from the futile screaming at a cold grave, Shawn sat down next to Lassiter's tombstone, duffel bag at his side. "I'm skipping town," he said, after clearing his throat to make his voice less hoarse. "This will be the last time you'll see me. It was a mistake to come back here the first time, and I won't make it again." He didn't realize until his voice cracked on the last word that he was crying like a little child. "I don't want to go. I had it really good here, you know? We were---we were all happy. Finally. Dad and Gus and I were all together, and I had Jules and this sweet job. I did good. Didn't I? Didn't I do good?" The sobs were shaking his shoulders, violent enough to make him ache. "I don't want to go, Lassie."

"Then don't go," came a dry, quiet voice.

Shawn screamed and frantically crawled six feet away from Lassiter's grave before he realized that it wasn't Lassiter's voice talking to him. He turned and sat on the ground, staring up at the figure in the gray pantsuit standing just behind the black tombstone. "Jules?"  
"Don't go, Shawn," she said. "Please. I can't lose you, too."  
"Jules, I---" Shawn cut himself off, for the simple reason that for once, he couldn't think of a single thing to say.

Juliet sat beside him and together, they sat in silence for a moment, staring at their reflections in the dark marble.

"How much of that did you hear?" Shawn asked.  
Juliet sighed. "All of it."  
"How did you know I'd be here?"  
"I didn't."  
"Jules, listen, I---"  
"No. This time, let me go first. Shawn, I---I love you."  
Shawn took a deep breath, let it out in a sigh, and grabbed Juliet's hand with both of his own. "I know, Jules. I know." 


	13. Epilogue

  
Carlton Lassiter was taken off life support and declared dead at 12:46 pm on May 6, 2009. His funeral was held three days later on May 9 at 2:00 pm. Juliet O'Hara was promoted to Head Detective the following week on May 13. The approximate dates for any other events mentioned previously in this chronicle are uncertain.

However, _Street_ reporters have determined that the date on which Shawn Spencer moved away from Santa Barbara was November 11, 2009. Spencer relocated to Sacramento, where he currently resides and operates a foundation for suicide prevention, which specializes in protecting the mental health of law enforcement operatives. He has written three books at present and regularly appears at conferences, college lectures, and training programs.

Of Spencer's colleagues, O'Hara is the only one remaining in Santa Barbara. Burton Guster is currently operating a private detective agency in Sacramento. The agency is known as Psych in honor of the agency formerly run by Spencer and Guster in Santa Barbara. The agency has been operational since December 14, 2009. Buzz McNab was transferred to the San Francisco Police Department as a detective in early 2010, where he currently works in the Narcotics division. Police Chief Karen Vick was also transferred to San Francisco in late 2012. She resigned her position in May of this year. Lauren Lassiter is currently a professor of media arts at UCLA, a position that she has held since March 2013.

None of the persons involved in the events reported here chose to make any comments. However, without their cooperation, this article would not be possible.

At Spencer's request, this chronicle is dedicated to the brave men and women who guard our citizens every day regardless of the cost.

May each and every one of them find peace. 


End file.
